No More Rescues - Ensure a Successful Website Migration to Drupal

In today’s day and age, your business isn’t viable if not scalable and future-proof. Hence, businesses are moving away from legacy systems to technologies that can embrace the upcoming digital disruptions while serving the needs of today. This is where Drupal walks in. Businesses are rapidly moving to Drupal on account of its scalability, vast offerings in capabilities, and enormous community support that is continuously working to improve Drupal. 

However, the move isn’t always as smooth as they imagine. Sometimes, the project is tanked or delayed, or implemented contrary to what was discussed and faces many more challenges as these. Certainly, when businesses decide to move they wouldn’t want to spend big bucks on a new website, application, or digital asset, only to have it fail and needing to be rescued. So, in this blog we discuss when a project needs to be rescued, what measures can be taken to avoid landing in a rescue situation, and how Srijan takes care of such projects.

When do businesses need to be rescued?

• The obvious - abandoned Drupal projects
  It is said that every person is unique, the same applies to projects too. The time to finish a project depends on the task of the business. But, even the simplest migration takes ~3 months of engagement. For chunkier projects involving massive data migration, integration, etc., the engagement time can extend up to years. 

  During this period, a lot of factors can impact the execution of your project. But, what makes matters worse is if your implementation partner does not adopt the agile way of working. Inability to incorporate changes and quickly adopt those changed priorities can lead to flawed implementation and execution. This then leads to abandoned projects as both parties reach an impasse.

• The monster that catches up - poor website design and infrastructure

  A poorly designed website is one of the most common pain points for businesses. The issues arising from this percolate to both website users and back-end users. While the website users are caught in a web of bad user experience and leave without giving you valuable engagement, the back-end users struggle to enhance the user experience and their updates only worsens the situation. Such issues are even more relevant in the eCommerce world where user experience is the only thing that matters and helps convert leads to actual customers. As commerce bots and machine learning techniques continue to automate marketing techniques, there is a real incentive for businesses to revamp their site with a target persona in mind.

• The roadblock that won’t let you learn - badly implemented Google Analytics

  Inaccurate or insufficient Google Analytics is another common pitfall holding back businesses. While setting up Analytics tracking for the homepage is a cakewalk, it takes a certain degree of expertise to set up a proper dashboard to analyze the data. If websites are not properly connected to GA, then businesses won’t have access to data, which they can monitor to gather insights. 

• The recipe of disaster - attempting to work with a lack of software expertise

  The first three points indicate issues which businesses face when working with a partner. This one is encountered with an in-house team. Sometimes, businesses also consider setting up their own team for accomplishing migration and such technology tasks. The outcome of these efforts majorly depends on the team hired. 

  The task might look simple- build a team, hire the right people, get the job done. However, the actual process is determined by a few more factors, for example: has the team aced agile, does everyone know how to make the best out of the tools, etc. A smooth synchronization of all these things would lead to ideal project execution. But in cases where things don’t go down well, businesses are left behind with an abandoned project needing to be rescued. Such a situation can also occur if the Drupal support and maintenance teams do not update the core regularly. It results in a website with a huge backlog and highly vulnerable to attacks.

What Should Businesses Know to Avoid Becoming a Rescue Project

• Identify what you need: Moving to a platform is a step-by-step approach and it is only fitting that you and your team understand this. Before allocating resources for the activity, it is of utmost importance to outline your needs and expectations from the projects. This also helps in establishing clear SLAs with the partner you bring onboard. 
• Involve Everyone who has a say: Do not limit the discovery to a certain set of teams. Since you will invest a significant amount of time, money, and effort, it is important to involve everyone who will be impacted by this decision. This also helps in defining the functionalities each of your teams will need to continue their operations and gradually improve their productivity. 
• Pick the Right Partner:  When looking for a technology partner there are two criteria businesses should focus on: a) they understand what you want, and b) they have the skills to accomplish what you need. If the team understands projection,  implementation strategy, and knows things to go the agile way, you are almost there. Also, working with a firm with strong development chops significantly reduces the potential issues.
• Know your journey like the back of your hand: Every project engagement begins with a discovery and then proceeds to execution, testing, and implementation. It is of prime importance that the expectations are clearly outlined right during the initial stages. This circles back to the first point, which suggests businesses to internally identify what they need and then proceed with the search to look for a partner. 

How Srijan takes care of your projects 

Over these years we have encountered multiple such rescue projects and as the name suggests the situation was every bit tricky as it sounds. But the good news is that we’ve been able to get through with all of these. We have a simple yet effective framework to deal with such projects, which is:

• A step back for a proper view
  When approached with such a project, we begin with analyzing what was expected and agreed on and then move on to outline what exactly is the situation. Taking a step back helps us to get a good look at the issue and figure out the next step towards the solution. 

• Pick-up, strategize or overhaul as needed
  Depending on the analysis, a decision is arrived at in unison on whether to pick up from where the teams left off, strategize part of it for correction or begin with a complete overhaul in case what’s left behind is beyond repair. 

This helps the business understand the best possible approach without burning their pockets and at the same time lets them achieve what they originally embarked on. 

So, if you feel your business is caught in a spiral storm of an unsuccessful project, Srijan can help. Over the years, we’ve rescued several projects from several domains. To see what we can do for you, get in touch!